Well, it certainly has been an interesting year for all of us. I hope you are all keeping safe and well and hopefully we can now see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel...
With all the extra time I have had on my hands this year with not being able to see family and friends, the one thing that I am grateful that I have a hobby that I can sit and enjoy in times like these. I have read so many really great books (and some not so great, which are all listed on my Goodreads profile), so I thought I would list below the books that I truly loved this year. All 5 star reads and all were stories that blew me away and I would not hesitate reading again. There are links below to my reviews if you want to know more about my thoughts on each book but I would highly recommend each and every one of these.
So, here's to 2021 and all that it has offers, which will include a lot more reading!
Best,
Debs :-)
The darker the lie, the deeper the secret . . .
In this house there are many secrets…
It
is 1965 and young Alexandra Crewe obediently marries the man her father
has selected for her. But very soon both she and her husband Laurence
realize that their marriage is a disaster. When real love finds
Alexandra, plucking her out of her unhappy existence, she is powerless
to resist. Her home becomes Fort Stirling, a beautiful Dorset castle,
but Alexandra fears that there will be a price to pay for this wonderful
new life. When tragedy strikes, it seems that her punishment has come,
and there is only one way she can atone for her sins . . .
In the
present day, Delilah Young is the second wife of John Stirling and the
new chatelaine of Fort Stirling. The house seems to be a sad one and
Delilah hopes to fill it with life and happiness. But when she attempts
to heal the heartbreak in John’s life, it seems that the forces of the
past might be too strong for her. Why does John have such a hatred for
the old folly on the hill, and what happened to his mother when she
vanished from his life? As Delilah searches for the truth, she realizes
that perhaps some secrets are better left buried . . .
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
A forbidden passion. A lifetime of consequences.
Cressida
Felbridge is living the high life as a debutante in 1960s London
society when she is courted by a friend of her brother's and set to
marry. Wishing only the best for his daughter, her father decrees that
she must have her portrait painted to mark the occasion. But as soon as
she meets the painter Ralph Few, Cressie knows her life will never be
the same again. Soon, she is deeply in love with Ralph, but there is one
problem: Ralph is still married to Catherine. As Cressie is drawn into a
strange, triangular relationship, Catherine's behaviour becomes
increasingly erratic and Ralph and Cressie escape to Cressie's family
home in Cumbria. But Catherine will not give up Ralph that easily . . .
In
the present day, Emily Conway has everything she could wish for: a huge
house in West London, two beautiful children and a successful husband,
Will. But as Emily and Will drive to a party, Will reveals that he has
been betrayed by his business partner. Steering the car off the road at
high speed, their perfect life is abruptly ended. When she wakes from
her injuries, Emily is told of a mysterious legacy: a house in Cumbria
on the edge of an estate, left to her by a woman she has never met.
Could this house provide the chance to start anew, or does it hold
secrets that she must uncover before it can be at peace?
The Snow Angel is a deliciously dark family saga from Lulu Taylor, the bestselling author of The Winter Folly.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
Behind a selfless act of kindness lies dark intentions . . .
Olivia and Dan Felbeck are blissfully happy when their longed-for
twins arrive after years of IVF. At the same time, they make the move
to Renniston Hall, a huge, Elizabethan house that belongs to absent
friends. Living rent-free in a small part of the unmodernised house,
once a boarding school, they can begin to enjoy the family life they've
always wanted. But there is a secret at the heart of their family, one
that Olivia does not yet know. And the house, too, holds its darkness
deep within it . . .
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
Caitlyn, there’s something I have to tell you. About Sara.
Caitlyn thinks her marriage to Patrick is a success. For one
thing, he is one of the few people not to fall head over heels for her
beautiful friend, Sara. Life is lived on his terms, but they are happy.
Aren’t they?
When
a devastating accident turns her existence upside down, Caitlyn is
forced to reassess everything she thought about her marriage, what she
truly knows about Patrick, and his real feelings for her best friend. In
the refuge of an old manor house, she begins to discover the truth.
In
1947, the worst winter in decades hits England, cutting off entirely
the inhabitants of Kings Harcourt Manor. For Tommy Carter, widowed at
the start of war, it is particularly hard: the burden of the family
falls on her. She has the solace of her children, and the interesting
presence of her brother’s friend, Fred. But there is also Barbara, a
mysterious figure from her past who appears to want a piece of Tommy’s
future as well.
Her Frozen Heart is a thrilling mystery from Lulu Taylor, top ten bestselling author of
The Snow Rose.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
Charlie Bloom never
wanted to be 'with the band'. She's happiest out of the spotlight,
behind her camera, unseen and unnoticed. But when she's asked to take
backstage photos for hot new boy band Fire&Lights, she can't pass up
the chance.
Catapulted into a world of paparazzi and backstage
bickering, Charlie soon becomes caught between gorgeous but damaged
frontman, Gabriel West, and his boy-next-door bandmate Olly Samson.
Then, as the boys' rivalry threatens to tear the band apart, Charlie
stumbles upon a mind-blowing secret, hidden in the lyrics of their
songs...
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
When she stumbles
across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems
like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a
staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at
Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious “smart” home fitted
out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands,
and by this picture-perfect family.
What she doesn’t know is
that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead
and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.
Writing to her
lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events
that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance
from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning
technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the
lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who
turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children
she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for
weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic
handyman, Jack Grant.
It was everything.
She knows she’s
made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that
her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not
innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least
not of murder. Which means someone else is.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
Alicia Berenson’s life
is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion
photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a
park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband
Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him
five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia’s
refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic
tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public
imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art
skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the
tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North
London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a
long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to
get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband
takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the
truth that threatens to consume him...
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
Two Truths and a Lie.
The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp
Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis,
the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched
the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she—or
anyone—saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing
Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.
Now a rising star in the
New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings—massive canvases
filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes
in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca
Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When
Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a
painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what
really happened to her friends.
Yet it's immediately clear that
all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from
fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at
her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all,
cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp's twisted origins. As
she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past
while facing threats from both man and nature in the present.
And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
No visitors. No nights
spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of
whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules
Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of
Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently
heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of
her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life
behind.
As she gets to know the residents and staff of the
Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter
Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she
lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not
what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is
starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost
story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.
Searching for
the truth about Ingrid's disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the
Bartholomew's dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her
discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at
the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a
killer, expose the building's hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew
before her temporary status becomes permanent.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
From New York Times
bestselling author Jodi Thomas comes the first book in a compelling,
emotionally resonant series set in a remote west Texas town—where family
can be made by blood or by choice…
Rancher Staten Kirkland,
the last descendent of Ransom Canyon's founding father, is rugged and
practical to the last. No one knows that when his troubling memories
threaten to overwhelm him, he runs to lovely, reclusive Quinn O'Grady…
or that she has her own secret that no one living knows.
Young
Lucas Reyes has his eye on the prize—college, and the chance to become
something more than a ranch hand's son. But one night, one wrong
decision, will set his life on a course even he hadn't imagined.
Yancy
Grey is running hard from his troubled past. He doesn't plan to stick
around Ransom Canyon, just long enough to learn the town's weaknesses
and how to use them for personal gain. Only Yancy, a common criminal
since he was old enough to reach a car's pedals, isn't prepared for what
he encounters.
In this dramatic new series, the lives, loves
and ambitions of four families will converge, set against a landscape
that can be as unforgiving as it is beautiful, where passion, property
and pride are worth fighting—and even dying—for.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
Ray Atlee is a
professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly
single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has
a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's
black sheep.
And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone
in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as
Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local
law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has
withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.
With the end in
sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to
Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge
himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for
Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.
Ray reluctantly heads south,
to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to
avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too
soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
"The hill people and
the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in
September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with
three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however,
was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather
could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It
could be a "good crop."
Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham,
a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator
is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton
fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never
been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own,
and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a
family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.
For six weeks they
pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and sometimes
each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no
seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and he finds himself
keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the
lives of the Chandlers forever.
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
The office of the public
defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators.
Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues,
dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the
case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it
is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.
As
he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a
conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the
middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical
companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that
would totally change his life--that would make him, almost overnight,
the legal profession's newest king of torts...
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
The Snow Rose is the gripping story of a woman on the run from her past by Lulu Taylor, author of The Winter Folly.
I
suppose Rory and I will divorce at some point, when I've got the time
to think about it and the strength to tackle the dreary admin it will
involve. The house. The division of money and belongings. What will
happen to Heather.
He's not taking her away from me. It's what he wants. It's what they all want.
I
know they think I'm not fit to look after her. My mother thinks it.
That's why I won't see her either, or my sister. They're in cahoots with
Rory, all of them scheming how to get her away from me. That's why I
have to escape them while I can, while I still have the opportunity . . .
Kate is on the run with her daughter, her identity hidden
and her destination unknown to her husband and family. She's found a
place where she and Heather can be alone and safe, a huge old house full
of empty rooms. But it turns out she's not alone. There are the strange
old ladies in the cottage next door, Matty and her blind sister Sissy.
How long can Kate hide Heather's presence from them? And then the
newcomers arrive, the band of eccentrics led by the charming and
charismatic Archer. Kate begins to realize that she is involved in
something strange and dangerous, and the past she's so desperate to
escape is about to find her . . .
CHECK OUT MY REVIEW HERE
The Winter Secret is a thrilling mystery from Lulu Taylor, top ten bestselling author of The Snow Rose.
‘My dear boy, the place is cursed. It always has been and it always will be . . .’
Buttercup Redmain has a life of pampered luxury, living in
beautiful Charcombe Park. Her older husband, Charles Redmain, is wealthy
and successful, and proud of the house he has painstakingly restored,
once owned by a famous ancestor. Buttercup is surrounded by people who
make her life delightfully easy. But the one thing she really wants
seems impossible.
There are other discomforting realities: her
husband’s ex-wife Ingrid still lives nearby although Buttercup has never
met her. And it soon becomes clear that all the people who make
Buttercup’s life so carefree are also watching her every move. Does she
actually live in a comfortable but inescapable cage? And what is the
real story of her husband’s previous marriage?
In the late 1940s,
Xenia Arkadyoff lived in Charcombe Park with her father, a Russian
prince, and her mother, a famous film star. Life seemed charmed, full of
glamour and beauty. But behind the glittering facade lay pain,
betrayal, and the truth about the woman Xenia spent her life protecting.
Now
Charcombe Park is calling back people who were once part of its story,
and the secrets that have stayed long hidden are bubbling inexorably to
the surface . . .
A chilling tale of
psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made
for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of
an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his
list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.
Years ago, bookseller
and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s
most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which
he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the
best including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne's Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald's The Drowner, and Donna Tartt's A Secret History.
But
no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils
Bookshop in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one
snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of
unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old
list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller
who spends almost every night at home reading. The killer is out there,
watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much
about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told
anyone, even his recently deceased wife.
To protect himself, Mal
begins looking into possible suspects—and sees a killer in everyone
around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail
of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more
victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might
never escape
Hen and her husband
Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in a new house outside of Boston,
Massachusetts. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an illustrator and works out
of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to control her bipolar
disorder. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.
But
when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she
spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The
sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a
young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long
had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t
talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either...
From the acclaimed author of Her Every Fear and The Kind Worth Killing
comes a diabolically clever tale of obsession, revenge, and
cold-blooded murder—a sly and brilliant guessing game of a novel in the
vein of Ruth Ware, Paula Hawkins, and Patricia Highsmith.
Harry
Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be sexy and
beautiful, in an "otherworldly" way. She has always been kind and
attentive, if a little aloof in the last few years.
Days before
his college graduation, Alice calls with shocking news. His father is
dead and the police think it’s suicide. Devastated, Harry returns to his
father’s home in Maine. There, he and Alice will help each other pick
up of the pieces of their lives and uncover what happened to his father.
Shortly
after he arrives, Harry meets a mysterious young woman named Grace
McGowan. Though she claims to be new to the area, Harry begins to
suspect that Grace may not be a complete stranger to his family. But she
isn’t the only attractive woman taking an interest in Harry. The
sensual Alice is also growing closer, coming on to him in an enticing,
clearly sexual way.
Mesmerized by these two women, Harry finds
himself falling deeper under their spell. Yet the closer he gets to
them, the more isolated he feels, disoriented by a growing fear that
both women are hiding dangerous—even deadly—secrets . . . and that
neither one is telling the truth.
Books
are dangerous things in Collins's alternate universe, a place vaguely
reminiscent of 19th-century England. It's a world in which people visit
book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. Once
their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book,
the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or
haunt them. After having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no
longer able to keep up with his farm chores, Emmett Farmer is sent to
the workshop of one such binder to live and work as her apprentice.
Leaving behind home and family, Emmett slowly regains his health while
learning the binding trade. He is forbidden to enter the locked room
where books are stored, so he spends many months marbling end pages,
tooling leather book covers, and gilding edges. But his curiosity is
piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the
arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection,
changes everything.
Ruth Jefferson is a
labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty
years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a
newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned
to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want
Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital
complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into
cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey
orders or does she intervene?
Ruth hesitates before performing
CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy
McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected
advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a
winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep
life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as
the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and
Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've
been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be
wrong.
The
stakes in the novel's plot are high: corporate crime on the largest
scale. The duo of lawyers at the centre of the narrative are Mary and
Wes Grace, who succeed in a multimillion dollar case against a chemical
company, who have polluted a town with dumped toxic waste. A slew of
agonising deaths have followed this, but lawyers for the chemical
company appeal, and a variety of legal shenanigans are employed -- and
it is certainly not clear which way the scales of justice will be
finally balanced.
As ever with Grisham, the mechanics of plotting
are key, and the characterisation is functional rather than detailed.
But it is (as always) more than capable of keeping the reader totally
engaged. Given John Grisham's much-publicised conversion to born-again
Christianity, it's intriguing to note here the implicit criticism of the
moral majority's religious values, but that is hardly central to the
enterprise. What counts is the storytelling, and while the writing is as
straightforward and uncomplicated as ever, few readers will put down The Appeal once they have allowed it to exert its grip on upon them. --Barry Forshaw
